The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Parable

The parable of death

The corpse of another prominent Nigerian was expected to be brought back to the country this week for official burial. The deceased was once the Deputy Governor of Plateau State who later became the Governor of Nassarawa State between 2007 and 2011. His name was Alhaji Aliyu Akwe-Doma. He was flown to Tel-Aviv, the capital of Israel last week for treatment against an undisclosed sickness.

For Nigerian politicians, this is another opportunity to stage another political jamboree even as the transfer of the corpse would have gulped millions of Naira at a time when millions of Citizens in Nassarawa State are on permanent hunger.

Ordinarily, if it were possible for the dead to talk or act, this man would have objected to the transfer of his corpse. After all, what could have happened if, as a Muslim, he had died while performing Hajj. Would his corpse have been flown back home? This is a difficult question to answer by his Muslim political colleagues.

Death in history

Historians never agreed on when and where the first human couple, Adam and Hawau (Eve), died. Some claimed that they died and were buried in India. Others believed that they lived and died in the Gulf area of the Middle East. According to the latter’s account, which Muslims tend to believe, Adam and Hawau met at a place near Makkah called Arafah which later became the global assembly center of Muslim Pilgrims. The account suggested that after their expulsion from Paradise they lived partly in the valley of Makkah and partly in Jeddah (75 kilometers away from Makkah).

The duo of Adam and Hawau were said to have left Paradise separately following their expulsion only to meet later at a place called Arafah (which means recognition) after a long period of wandering. Their sojourn in that region of the world   shows that the Middle East was the first place of human settlement on earth. The existence of an ancient rectangular house called Ka‘bah is a testimony to that assertion. Hawau was believed to have died and interned in the former capital of Saudi Arabia, which is why the place was named Jeddah an Arabic word meaning Grandmother.

The first human death

Neither Adam nor his wife (Hawau) knew anything called death until one of their first two sons killed the other. The two sons: Habil and Qabil (Abel and Cain) had clashed over the choice of a wife. The tussle led to the killing of Habil by Qabil. But the focus here is neither on the cause of their clash nor the killing of one by the other. Rather, it is on the lesson which Allah wanted to teach humanity through that episode.

Historic lesson

Shortly after killing his brother, Qabil fell into a dilemma over what to do with the corpse. He was not worried as much by his conscience over his crime as to what would become of the corpse. But while thinking on what to do, two birds of the Roller family appeared before him and started fighting each other. In no time, one killed the other. The strange scene attracted the attention of Qabil like a tragic drama. He watched the incident with full attention as the killer bird used its legs to dig a grave-like hole, pushed the corpse of its vanquished brother into it and covered it up. From that wonderful scene, Qabil got the idea of what to do with the corpse of his brother. And he buried him. Thus, the lesson was learnt that this human being created from the earth would eventually return to the earth.

The Birds’ mission

What Qabil did not know at that time, however, was that the two birds, which became his teachers, were Angels. And the lesson learnt from their experience was not just about death and burial but also about when and where to bury a human corpse. If Allah had wanted ceremony and ostentation to be lavished on burial, the killer bird would have demonstrated same in the drama. Qabil did not move the corpse of Habil to any other place for burial because his bird teacher did not do that. Like the killer bird, he also buried his brother at the very spot where his brother breathed his last.

When Death Strikes

In Islam, death is supposed to be the determinant of where the corpse of a dead person should be buried. Death takes life at a particular time and place according to its own natural schedule of duty. It gives no hint of the exact time and place to strike. And, after striking, it does not anticipate the transfer of a corpse across any major distance. That is why the body of any demised person starts to decompose just hours after it becomes lifeless. To confirm this, the Quran chapter 31: 24 says: “No soul knows what it will do tomorrow. No soul knows where it will die and be buried”.

Death of First Muslim Emigrants

The first group of the Makkah people who embraced Islam at its inception suffered so much severe persecution in the hands of pagans that they had to migrate to Abyssinia (Now Ethiopia) for safety. While there, a number of them died and their wives and children became widows and orphans respectively. All those who died in Abyssinia were buried in that country. Another group of the earliest Muslims migrated to Taif. A number of them also died there leaving widows, widowers and orphans behind. Their bodies were not transferred back to Makkah for burial.

Argument based on Ignorance

There is tendency for some unbelievers to argue that the above cited Muslim emigrants were fugitives who had no courage to bring back the corpses of their relatives for burial. But what of those who died in the battle of Badr which Makkah pagans came all the way from Makkah to fight against the Muslims from a distance of hundreds of kilometers away? The corpses of the Muslims who died in that imposed war were buried right there at the battle ground despite the nearness of Badr to Madinah and the Muslims’ victory in that battle?

The Prophet’s Example

It should be remembered that one of the most painful deaths to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was that of his uncle, Hamzah, the great warrior who fell to the spear of a Makkan pagan in the battle of Uhud and was buried right there at the foot of mountain Uhud in Madinah where the battle took place. In fact, no one who died in another town or country among the Muslims was ever brought back to his original home for burial. Not even the corpse of the Prophet or that of any of his disciples who died in Madinah was returned to Makkah for burial. The reason for this is to avoid the transfer of bitterness and mental agony arising from the death of a person from one place to another.

Implications

One of the implications of the above scenarios is to avoid the unnecessary strain and expenses which such transfer can unleash on some people. That was why some great companions of the Prophet like Abubakr, Umar Bn Khattab, Uthman Bn Affan had to be buried in Madina where they died rather than Makkah where they were born. Also, Alli Bn Abi Talib and Mu’awiyah bn Abi Sufyan were buried in Iraq and Syria respectively where they served and died as Caliphs. Even Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet and 72 others who were massacred by the forces of Yazid Bn Mu’awiyah at Karbalau in Iraq had to be buried where they were massacred despite the nobility of their pedigree.

Islam’s Position on Death

In Islam, death, like birth has no propensity for any display of aristocracy. And, ascribing one to it is a sign of ignorance and primitivism. Islam abhors extravagancy in whatever form and it admonishes against it. That is why the great religion does not take kindly to commercial exhibition of coffins and ostentatious funerals. These are actually prohibited in Islam. Covings can be used to convey corpses from the place of death or mortuary to the cemetery but such covings must not be ornamentally decorated. Neither must the Muslim corpses be extravagantly shrouded for burial.

The idea of keeping the corpse in a morgue for a long time after death, to allow for ostentatious funeral and extravagant spending in a society where poverty is manifest, is a sheer act of prodigality based on ignorance. Neither the expensive shroud nor the ornamented coving with which the corpse is buried has any benefit to the soul of the deceased. It is sheer wastage, which has no use even for the relatives of the deceased. That idea, which is rampant, especially in some parts of Nigeria today, is hardly different from cremation done by the Buddhists, the Hindus and others with fanfare in the Far East. Both are a product of ignorance and vain-glory.

Blind Imitation

As usual, Nigerians do not copy anything negative without surpassing the original. Fraud and narcotics as well as terrorism are some examples. The fashion now in vogue in Nigeria is for any public official or private moneybag to travel abroad for medical treatment at the slightest feeling of an ailment. It is as if Nigerian money is outlawed from providing the best hospital here in Nigeria. The concept is to separate the rich from the poor since an exclusive hospital for the rich will sound illogical in a country peopled overwhelmingly with paupers. Even when some of those sick travelers will be treated abroad by their fellow Nigerians, they do not see anything wrong in spending their ill-gotten money abroad to the detriment of their home country. They seem to enjoy being flown back home lifeless if only to display aristocracy in death. Thus, your death is not considered newsworthy unless your corpse is flown into the country via Muritala Muhammad airport, Lagos or Nnamdi Azikiwe airport, Abuja for public display. Yet no lesson is learnt that even Murtala Muhammad and Nnamdi Azikwe died and were buried here in Nigeria. Can anybody cite a clear difference between death in Europe or America and the one in Nigeria? Why must our money be audaciously stolen alive in Nigeria and notoriously spent in death abroad?

Extravagancy

With the huge amount of money spent by Nigerian sick travelers on treatments abroad and on flying their corpses back home, one can understand why Nigerians are so wretched that their lives are not worth more than a dollar per head per day despite the billions of dollars accruing to the country from our oil wells. It is necessary to thank God however, that though ‘Tokunbo’ products dumped in Nigeria daily are uncountable, the   human corpses amongst them are those of the aristocrats and not of the innocent indigent class.

Leveler of Mankind

Death is a leveler of mankind. It does not distinguish between the rich and the poor.

We shall all die willy-nilly and we shall all be buried in the belly of the same mother earth where the bones of masters and servants or those of sworn enemies may struggle together for space. Mother earth can be described as man’s inseparable companion. She accompanies man day and night, in life and in death. She surpasses biological mothers in playing her role in the life of man. From a chip of her natural being, man is said to have been created. Allah tells us in Qur’an that “From her (the earth) ‘We’ created you and into her belly ‘We’ shall return you”.

In playing the role of a mother, the earth carries man on her back while the latter remains alive. And in death, she incubates him in her belly in readiness for the resurrection that will see him through the inevitable Day of Judgment. In that process, there is a similarity between the duties of a primary mother (the earth) and that of a secondary mother otherwise known as biological mother especially in respect of conception and delivery.

While the biological mother cares for man only when she and man are alive, the mother earth cares for him both in life and in death. Unlike that of the biological mother, the life span of the mother earth is indefinite.

Age of the Earth

Some scientists have given us different ages of the earth using all sorts of technological instruments. But the only authentic statement on that can come from unlimited measure. She weighs the load on her head as well as the one in her belly and balances them up for natural equanimity.

Without the earth, mountains and oceans would have no habitat to call their own and the long term fossils which turn into what we call minerals would have had nowhere to hibernate. Before all these and millions of other unidentified matters came into existence, the earth had been. And when all of them might have vanished into permanent oblivion, according to their scheduled time, the earth will continue to be until natural termination time comes.

We know that man was created from the earth. We know that the earth accommodates all living and non-living things on and in her. What we do not know is the source of the earth in creation. From what was the earth created? In luring us to reasoning, Allah has severally called the attention of man to the nature of certain creatures like the mountains, the valleys, the oceans and the seas, the minerals and the human and animal fossils buried in the earth as well as the varieties of plants and insects which dot the earth like a galaxy of stars on the Milky Way. He has also challenged man to observe the very nature of the wonderful carpet called the earth.

The Almighty Allah who created the earth. If scientists have the means of telling us the age of the earth, do they also have the means of determining her life span? The earth is not just a carrier of unlimited weight; she is also a scale of

No Difference

The earth in America or China or Australia is not different from that of Nigeria or Saudi Arabia or Italy. And no earth is superior to another except with Allah’s conferment of sacredness.

Were the aristocrats privileged to calve out a separate portion of the earth for themselves, they would have restricted the masses to a disadvantaged area of the earth. But the thinking of man is different from the planning of Allah. Celebration of funerals so flamboyantly as often exhibited in Nigeria is nothing more than celebration of vanity which fetches the celebrator no profit. In Islam, it is ordained to care for the dead in spirit and in action. But such should not be at the expense of the underprivileged living. May Allah repose the soul of the deceased former Governor in eternal Bliss.

March 9, 2018
Ajimobi’s ‘third term’ story is misunderstood parable, says Olubadan

The Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Saliu Akanmu Adetunji, Aje Ogungunniso I, has said the story credited to him on Oyo State Governor Abiola Ajimobi’s “third term” was largely misunderstood.

The frontline monarch said he did not use the words literally but figuratively, adding that he was surprised many people could not read between the lines.

Oba Adetunji spoke in Ibadan, the state capital, while hosting hundreds of Ibadan indigenes who paid homage at his Popoyemoja palace as part of activities marking this year’s Ibadan Week.

In a statement by his spokesman Adeola Oloko, the first-class monarch noted that what appeared simple and straightforward could sometimes be pregnant with meanings.

He said the discerning would understand the complexity in the simplicity of his statement.

Oba Adetunji urged aggrieved residents not to take the matter out of context but to read more about the use of language, idioms and sarcasm.

He added: “As a monarch, I have no power over the election and re-election of anybody, not to talk of tenure extension, which is unconstitutional. Besides, when I was exchanging banters with the governor, I was only cracking a joke with him as a son and subject.

“Even, if Governor Ajimobi offended us, it would be indecorous on my part to address him harshly. Besides, there is a subsisting judgment over the controversial chieftaincy review, which awaits compliance. About four or five suits relating to the matter are still in court and have not been withdrawn.”

The Olubadan also denied receiving any gratification from Ajimobi or his proxies for cracking the third term joke, as being insinuated in some quarters.

He said if anybody had demonstrable evidence, he should produce it.

The first Vice President-General of the Central Council of Ibadan Indigenes (CCII), Dr. Lasisi Balogun, who stood in for the President-General, Chief Yemi Soladoye, congratulated the monarch on his second coronation anniversary.

He said CCII was making progress in the protection of the ancient city’s boundaries.

The chief said work on the new Olubadan palace was expected to complete as soon as more funds were made available.

March 5, 2018
The parable of Odili’s ginger farm

In a way, the unveiling of PAMO University of Medical Science in Port Harcourt last weekend speaks not just to Nigeria’s dark reality but also its possibilities. All contemplative Peter Odili ever dreamt when he acquired a vast swath of land in Elelenwo forest in 1989 was no more than a gigantic ginger farm complete with processing equipment.

That was before his foray into politics.

Other ideas cascaded as the years rolled by and urbanization approached. First, the farm was converted to a training and empowerment camp for vulnerable women. Later, it yielded to scholarship as an outreach of the National Open University. Then, last year, following an epiphany of sorts, the kaleidoscope of derelict structures were spruced up preparatory to the take-off of the first privately owned university in Rivers State, with a faculty drawing from some of the best professionals around.

The fruition was the brief but colorful ceremony of last Saturday.

But much more significant, I think, is the fortuitous circumstance the varsity idea was conceived. Dateline: December 2016. A four-hour flight delay brought Dr. Odili and a total stranger together inside the VIP lounge of the Abuja airport. The acquaintance turned out to be the Executive Secretary of the National University Commission.

Both being intellectuals, their conversation along the line veered into the increasing educational tourism abroad for training attuned to global trend particularly in specialized areas like medicine and the concomitant drain on the nation’s meager resources.

For Odili, that was the epiphanic moment. The rest, as they say, is now history.

Now, while acknowledging the record despatch with which PAMO’s application for registration was treated, the Pro-Chancellor was effusive in his praise of the NUC boss, Professor Abubakar Rasheed, who is not a fellow Niger Deltan nor Southerner but a northerner.

According to him, Rasheed, a complete stranger to him until the 2016 encounter in Abuja, literally moved mountains to ensure PAMO saw the light of the day. More, no less an elder statesman than former head of state, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, also accepted, without hesitation, his nomination as Chancellor of the new institution.

Coming at a time the nation’s fault-lines are getting magnified on account of negative politics championed by ethnic entrepreneurs, the story of PAMO’s conception and delivery is undoubtedly teachable indeed. It speaks to our potentials once we refuse parochial considerations to influence our sense of judgement.

Sounding somewhat emotional at the inauguration Saturday, Governor Nyesom Wike of Rivers State expressed government’s willingness to accord PAMO unqualified support not just out of a moral duty to help the private sector, but also in the confidence that, given the professed vision, it will soon add Rivers to the global map in the field of medical research and study.

Coming six months ahead of his 70th birthday and over forty years he was certificated as medical doctor, Odili could indeed not have conceived a worthier professional legacy.

February 14, 2018
Parable of Nasir El-Rufai’s competency test

Governor Nasir El-Rufai is a man of the gallery. Oftentimes he becomes spectacle to his tailored audience, an assemblage of haters and sycophants peopling his courtier and political courtesan class. El-Rufai’s recent exploit evokes a fable; a divisive meme of leadership and professionalism.

The two concepts clash in the arena of El-Rufai. Posturing as the hardnosed disciplinarian, the Kaduna governor butts head with about 22,000 teachers and the Kaduna State chapter of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC).

The reason is not farfetched. Having watched with dismay as teachers in the state flunked competency tests, the Kaduna governor did the needful by approving the dismissal of affected teachers. Predictably, the diminutive governor’s move generated buzz in the social space as mainstream and new media sensationalised his measure on the wings of protest and articulated vitriol by labour union and political opposition.

Trust Ayodele Fayose, Governor of Ekiti, to never miss an opportunity to throw darts at perceived shortcomings of colleagues in the All Progressive Congress (APC); Fayose accused the Kaduna governor of sacking teachers with the support of President Muhammadu Buhari.

“I’m warning Nigerians again, the agenda of the APC is to sack workers. They are sacking teachers in Kaduna and Buhari is supporting them,” he said on Twitter.

The tweet triggered a debate which saw some in favour but others against Fayose. The latter’s spokesman, Lere Olayinka tweeted: “In Ekiti, we did not conduct competency test for teachers, we still made first position in NECO in 2016 and 2017. El-Rufai can come and learn from us.”

The Kaduna governor, replied Fayose thus: “Your Excellency Sir, we are not sacking teachers in Kaduna. Rather, we are replacing unqualified people who are unfit to be called teachers to save the future of the next generation.”

El-Rufai’s retort is instructive. It addresses the conundrum of ‘the next generation.’ Of course, the governor talks a good game and he has done what ex-governor of Ekiti, Kayode Fayemi, attempted to do via his defunct Teachers’ Development Needs Assessment (TDNA).

Now the minister of mining, Fayemi reportedly helped El-Rufai by introducing him to the consultant that conducted the controversial assessment of Kaduna teachers. The competency tests, which were based on Primary 4 level examinations, were failed by over half of the primary school teachers who sat for it, implying that they are unfit to teach at the foundation level.

El-Rufai didn’t goof by his latest deed. The Kaduna governor is undoubtedly on good course but among other things, he needs to cushion the adverse effects of his actions by employing qualified replacements for the unqualified teachers.

He also needs to evolve a process to identify those that could be retrained and re-employed into the teaching service.

Then El-Rufai has to admit truths related to the reality of Kaduna’s incompetent teachers. The latter, like millions of Nigerian graduates are victims of the incumbent ruling class, to which El-Rufai, sadly belongs.

El-Rufai in a recent interview admitted thus: ”Unqualified teachers entered the system because the recruitment of teachers was politicised. The local government council chairmen and other senior politicians and bureaucrats saw teaching as a dumping ground for their thugs, supporters and other unqualified persons.

“Teachers were employed at local government level without adherence to standards. In many instances, no examinations or interviews were conducted to assess the quality of recruits. Political patronage, nepotism and corruption became the yardsticks, thus giving unqualified persons a way in. Teaching jobs were given as patronage to those connected to politicians and bureaucrats.”

The governor’s admission speaks to the decadence and regression of his ruling class. It echoes the wound-like rawness of Fayemi’s jarring speech to recent graduands of the University of Lagos (UNILAG). Fayemi told the graduands: “quit whining and start doing — for ourselves and for our country. If something angers you so much, instead of whining, think hard about possible solutions and do something about it.”

Thus within El-Rufai’s privileged bulk too, lurks a humane realist. But can El-Rufai divorce himself from the insensitivity, sloppiness and entitlement mentality characteristic of Nigeria’s ruling class?

What has the Kaduna governor done to establish himself as a deviant from Nigeria’s decadent political culture; after all, he was part of the system since the past regime of ex-president, Olusegun Obasanjo.

The afflictions of Nigeria’s educational system certainly exceeds competency tests and the scourge of bungling primary school teachers. The country’s political machinery and civil service need reforms too.

At the moment, cult of self dominates Nigeria’s cultural and political landscape. This cult is responsible for plaguing the country with what El-Rufai identified as a culture of “political patronage, nepotism and corruption.”

It advances what Hedges identifies as the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, lavishness, and utter conceit. El-Rufai’s ruling class is hindered by masturbatory ego, insensitivity to electoral woes, persistent duplicity, and incapacity for remorse.

It is about time that the Nigerian electorate sacked this ruling class, comprising public officers who educate their wards abroad even as they devastate the nation’s education system by their ineptitude.

Several governors, senators and traditional rulers educate their children abroad and travel overseas to celebrate their graduation while schools in the country are shut down for over 10 months as in the case of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) and the host state’s bungling governor.

This brings to mind again, the competency test. While some have applauded the move, others have frowned at it. However, President Buhari, on Monday, declared his support for El-Rufai’s replacement of the incompetent teachers.

To justify the decision to sack the teachers, the state government released some answer scripts from the competency test, revealing how many could not answer questions set for primary four students. The state government lamented that about two-thirds of primary school teachers in the state failed to score up to 75 per cent in the examination.

This no doubt requires urgent corrective measures. But if subjected to the same test, how many senators, governors and presidential staff would excel unassisted? If El-Rufai and peer are so particular about establishing quality education in Kaduna and neighbouring states, would they kindly extend similar passion to the anti-corruption campaign and establishment of competent leadership across the country?

There is a joke in public circuits that the country’s incumbent ruling class would fail a 1, 000-word essay on ‘My Politics.’ This joke affirms the gruesome reality of Nigeria’s corrupt, bungling ruling class. Yet they gleefully score cheap points via El-Rufai’s significant measure.

As you read, El-Rufai’s ruling class afflicts children of the electorate with substandard education while they educate their wards abroad.

Sound bites and statistics electrify them as fermented grape excites the lust of the habitual drunk. Little wonder they deploy statistics in the same way that Andrew Lang’s drunken man uses lamp-posts – for support rather than illumination.

November 17, 2017
Parable of the press and the Nigerian spectacle

This minute, the fable persists of Nigeria’s ‘crooked’ press. The incumbent government conceals the true nature of President Muhammadu Buhari’s ailment ‘to prevent the press from twisting the truth into lies’ and sensational news, it claims. In turn, a disenchanted public accuses the press of unpardonable rot and indolence.

On radio, TV, social media and the newspapers, ‘critics of note’ berate the nation’s press. At the backdrop of this entitled rage, the public bemoans the descent of the press. Neighbourhood pubs pulsate with howls of liquor-smashed folk bemoaning the dearth of ‘investigative journalism.’ Pastors, Imams, labour leaders and self-styled activists mount the soapbox to bewail and flay the press. Political, corporate, intellectual and spiritual hoodlums weave a discordant melody of scorn and syndicated hatred.

This gory imagery of the press however, reveals the core of the Nigerian persona. The press is crooked because it serves and hails from an infinitely corrupt, dishonourable and uncivilised society.

The press afflicts Nigeria so because it is peopled by men and women sired by debauched tribes, degenerate communes and lineages. Show me a corrupt reporter and I will tell you captivating stories of ancestral filth and decadence, communal muck and insolence, institutionalized greed and selfishness.

Were our families, communities, religious temples and other social institutions untainted by filth, the nation’s press would be free of unscrupulous characters – after all, they are every journalist’s bastions of socialisation.

By its press, Nigeria suffers rebirth of degenerate image, an explosion of tarnished persona. The incumbent press fulfills our institutionalised tendencies, glorifying the rough edges of primordial vice and giving it a trendy tone.

The Nigerian press painstakingly redefines journalism in society’s besmirched image because failure to do so is tantamount to career suicide or economic hara-kiri. Those who attempt to be ‘professional’ or ‘ethically different’ become unbidden martyrs on the nation’s altar of smut.

Remember Dele Olojede, the Pulitzer-prized journalist. Having earned international acclaim for doing good journalism, he ventured into the nation’s amoral swamp with the swagger of an idealist. Olojede sought to create a professional medium as fabled Peter Pan sought purpose in mythic Neverland. NEXT, his brainchild was certainly imperfect, but it was a welcome alternative in a swamp of caged, commercialised media.

Olojede’s dream suffered stillbirth; NEXT, for all its cheek and vaunted splendour, espoused the tenets of fragile fiction. Little wonder Nigeria flipped to ‘Epilogue’ one sheet after NEXT’s preface. Forget Olojede and his defunct NEXT, several ambitious professionals and ethical journalism have been interred on the famished paths, where tall dreams fade to snide realism.

Yet Nigeria craves Renaissance Press. Government and the governed bemoan the dearth and death of good journalism even as they plot and effect the murder of the journalist in the street. Need I recall the willful murder by society, of brilliant men and women by whose spark, journalism attained honour and a pride of place among most honorable callings?

Society thwarts good, ethical journalism wherever it finds its random sprouts. Driven by varied, selfish interests, politicians, so-called ‘corporate titans,’ activists, NGO-entrepreneurs, clerics and several other classes of refined thieves and criminal masterminds, bemoan the death of a vibrant press at the backdrop of their frantic, coordinated struggle to tame and enslave the press.

You must know that companies’ expend a large fortune via their Corporate Affairs Departments to ‘kill negative stories’ and ‘befriend the press.’ In the mix, big business endow the academia with massive funding to create and implement academic theories and experiments geared to tame and emasculate the press.

And if you would look beneath the smokescreen of Public Relations’ ridiculous, dandy theories, you would find a devious, criminal and contemptible plot to hinder socially responsible, public service journalism.

But while businesses exert sinful influence on the press, politicians own the press. Government departments, functionaries and agencies ply the press with intimidating advertisements; governors, senators, council chairmen, the presidency among others, keep the press on a leash of ‘carrots’ and intimidating largesse, in desperate bid to ‘own the editors’ and ‘determine the news.’

Lest we forget the journalists playing dumb to degenerate, vainglorious, overbearing Mullahs and ‘General Overseers (G.Os)’ or ‘Spiritual Daddies’ if you like. Nigeria should never forget how the nation’s Christian leadership goaded former President Goodluck Jonathan with deceptive, currency-activated prophecies to fulfill their decadent lust for mammon and hatred for Buhari, who they claimed would ‘Islamise Nigeria.’

And marching in virtual lockstep with these shades of despicable characters is the country’s amoral, impoverished citizenry. Driven by greed and inexplicable malice, large sections of the citizenry foster and fulfill the savage lusts of the nation’s leadership. Hence their inclinations to serve as duplicitous pawns and cannon fodder to the ruling class’ firestorms.

The humiliation of the journalist persists in the hands of his employer. Salaries still range from N15, 000 per month at entry level to N70, 000 per month at managerial level across most media. Just three media houses may claim exceptionality in this respect and this reality is known to the government, big business, advertisers and general public that the Nigerian journalist is an endangered species, haunted by his employer and tormented by the public he serves.

These sad realities lead to daily exodus of skilled and promising hands from journalism and hourly influx of quacks, fortune hunters and blackmailers into the profession.

Yet Nigeria demands a free and effervescent press, peopled by flawless professionals, inured to the ethics of investigative, public service journalism. Even as such admirable traits and unimpeachable character are rarely attributable to every segment of society.

Nigeria’s critical mob, like the fabled treacherous rabble, seeks fulfillment of tyrant fantasies: the fantasies often vary between the destruction of an unpopular government, despot or worn-out civilization by the press. Reality however, affirms the duplicity of Nigeria’s critical mob.

The latter is continually tamed and kept on a leash by a ruling class that capitalizes on its obvious handicaps: its impulsiveness, insensibility to reason and judgment, poverty of soul and intellect, its irritability and overt sentimentality – which are undeniably characteristic of beings belonging to inferior forms of evolution, like savages and carnivores.

I stand corrected given the penchant of the citizenry to flout traffic rules, moot imprudent plots and decapitate one another driven by religious, ethnic bigotry.

The Nigerian press won’t fulfill the society’s utopian fantasies. No. The press will continue to subvert Nigerians’ noble expectations of it in perfect understanding the society’s cultural shift from uncompromising morality to unbridled amorality and hedonism. The press won’t give society honest, developmental news because every segment of the society strives to unmoor the journalist from his role as a crucial appendage of the nation’s conscience.

This minute, the press feeds society biased definitions of reality as determined by big business, government, looters, lobbyists and other civil society. Contemporary Nigeria embraces the emotional pageant that has turned news into paid publicity and mindless entertainment. The journalist in response, kowtows to lusts and vanities of modern society. The press understands that the call for good journalism is mere spectacle and display, a fulfillment of Nigeria’s lust for pagan ostentation. The press is you get is the press you deserve.

July 28, 2017
Mob parable

Mobs destroy and scarcely create. Be it as wild savages or unthinking herds, it has always been the preoccupation of the mob to tear down. Take the Nigerian mob for instance; by its impulsiveness, lack of forethought and restraint, want of personal and societal ethics, it expedites the destruction of everything and anything – like an unpopular policy or worn-out civilization. Whether concrete or abstract, hard-wearing or fragile, whatever object or subject becomes the fascination of the Nigerian mob is sooner annihilated.

This devastation persists as a ceaseless cycle and it is amply sustained and accelerated via brutish inclinations that characterize the Nigerian mob. Like primeval savages, the Nigerian mob lives, thinks and acts like creatures of the wild thus its unwritten code of existence: “Every man for himself in our communal jungle where only the strongest survive.”

Who are the Nigerian mob? This question expectedly excites spurious theories, allegations and conclusions about the breed aptly classifiable and identifiable with mob mentality. While many would readily finger the nation’s ruling class and its horde of loyalists, many more would categorize the impoverished breadlines as the core of the Nigerian mob.

In the flurry of generalizations, a certifiable crowd is omitted essentially because it constitutes the cult of self-appointed critics, intellectuals, moralists and the socially aware. This crowd comprises the pedestrian and infinitely tiresome breed of Nigerians who never see anything good about Nigeria; their pastime involves logging on to every social media portal with considerable traffic to continually vent and portray Nigeria as a failed enterprise.

Facebook and Twitter offer wonderful platforms for these interesting breed to say all manner of unprintable things about Nigeria and their fellow Nigerians. Another category of this breed comprises journalists, ‘social commentators’ and newspaper columnists like me. The access we enjoy to means and channels of expression is oftentimes abused by us.

It is alright to criticize but the bulk of what many of us do is classifiable as destructive sentimentality and hate-mongering. Oftentimes, we engage in sanctimonious whining, blame-casting and character assassination for reasons that border on the infantile and shame logic.

The utter lack of gumption and foresight incessantly perpetuated by this breed continually offer court jesters and media attack-mongrels of the ruling class innumerable opportunities to lash out, deploying sophistry, ad hominem and juvenile heckling in responding to critics of the ruling class they serve.

Such characters can treat the Nigerian critic and journalist with contempt given the irresponsibility and mercenariness that characterizes the latter’s criticisms of their principals. Having spent quality time as vocal parts of such crowd, media aides and attack-dogs of the ruling class respond to criticisms from a standpoint of knowledge and towering impatience.

A Special Adviser to the President or a Governor on Media Affairs for instance, can continually afford to treat their principals’ critics with disdain goaded by the notion that the latter lacks the moral justification to perform such crucial roles in the interest of the collective.

True, many a government critic on Facebook, Twitter or newspaper column is as despicable as the ruling class he condemns. Racism, gluttony, political harlotry, religious intolerance, sexism, all manners of bigotry and base sentimentality characterize Nigeria’s crowd of social critics. In several instances, members of this breed cheerily present themselves as muscles to the tyrannical ruling class they love to condemn, for a price.

This breed of Nigerian mob, in its incessant criticisms of the ruling class, conveniently forgets that the incumbent leadership is a reflection of the society from which it emerges. If we are yet to produce honest and conscientious leadership, it’s because our society is constituted by the perverse and corrupt. If bank chiefs, stock exchange bosses and civil servants we parade are more nimble at stealing than performing constructive, developmental roles, it is because the society institutionalizes and celebrates vice. And if the worst of us continually emerge as the best leaders we could ever have, it is because we are innately wired to value and elevate vile above virtue.

Sadly, rather than engage in active crusade against the perpetuation of such anomalies, the critical mob scurry on to soapboxes we mount in our living rooms, courtyards, pubs and social media to curse our luck and curse the times.

We are that pathetic part of the Nigerian mob; negligible integers a cynical reader recently identified as “armchair Trotskys.” Unlike the more servile herd whose allegiance to the ruling class is at once wild and destructive, the breed we comprise is even more vicious and symptomatic of the failure of scholarship, literacy and other contemporary advancements in civilization we ought to epitomize.

At least, the servile herd is actively involved – be it negatively or positively – according to the depth and strength of its awareness; this teeming mass of illiterate, semi-literate, unemployed and impoverished breadlines to mention a few, claim ignorance and poverty as reasons for its blind acquiescence to the tyranny of the ruling class, however, career critics and armchair Trotskys like you and I, given our touted learning and exposure, can hardly make such claims.

Today, we are shackled by vulgar sentiments of religion, rebellion and ethnicity. More worrisome is our continued enslavement by the ruling class via obscene inducements and gifts of grandeur. Consequently, we capitulate to a system by which we are psychologically broken and confined to dubious segregation and manipulative politics. The sentimental fops amongst us are programmed by rumors, innuendo and outright falsehood to shun the path to progress and tow the fast lane to destruction.

Exasperatedly, many identify the major problem afflicting us as the dearth of upright leadership mooted and drawn from the nation’s youth divide. This dearth persists due to our inability to selflessly and responsibly apply ourselves to the crusade against corrupt and selfish leadership. A more crucial dearth however, manifests by our inability to fulfill the demands of sterling citizenship.

A sterling citizenry no doubt provides the humane elements necessary to foster a benevolent leadership but we are too busy casting blames and feathering our own nests that we conveniently forget to become the good citizens we ought to become. The prospective heroes we could rely on have learnt the wisdom of keeping silent. They tactfully scoff at our romanticized wish to abolish the status quo, knowing that, as usual, we would settle for an opportunistic contract between our exploiters (the government) and a part of the exploited (labour and youth leadership), at the expense of the rest of the exploited (you, me and everyone) – something Noel Ignatin aptly identifies as “the original sweetheart agreement.”

Thus we resign to the tyranny of the ruling class, courting and maligning it often in the same breath, while we anticipate and wish doom upon Nigeria. If we look inwards, we would find that the intellectual aptitudes, will and individuality of many of us are strained by disillusionment, cowardice, laziness and abject failure in our roles as patriots and citizens of humanity. Several self-styled leaders of the critical mob are currently in the jailhouse of mammon and sociopolitical expediency. Consider the case of several critics turned presidential aides for instance; yesterday, they were mob heroes; today they carry on like minions enslaved to power and perpetually drunk on their own saliva.

August 19, 2016
Parable of the grifter calling the con-artist, fraud

A cursory look at our families excites the creepiest form of marvel. The Nigerian family unit today parades the worst form of savagery. Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child hurt an annoying neighbour’s dog or cat; and such wise fathers we have now that consider it a notable mark of martial spirit when they see their son domineer his weaker peer. And there are those whose parents raise righteously, breeding them in their images, to conform to and perpetuate the worst forms of religious bigotry and inhumanity, according to the holy scriptures.

Ultimately, our parents look upon it as a sign of great wit and astuteness to see us cheat and oppress our peer by some malicious treachery and deceit. It gladdens their hearts to see us evolve into ‘lovable’ brutes at a tender age. They claim it’s a worthy demeanor for the very tough world out there.

Thus from adolescence through adulthood, they greet every dishonesty we perpetrate with cheer, as long as it translates to stupendous wealth, higher status and the comfort of knowing that their children are “smart” and inured in the ways of the world. These are the true seeds and roots of cruelty, tyranny and treason. Our parents nurture vile in us and we perpetuate it in attitude, learning from their misconduct, till we start procreating and perpetuating within our lineage, grosser forms of grotesqueness and bestiality.

It starts from the very little things, like nurturing us to be brutes through childhood and grooming us to be fraudulent through adolescence. Hence the multitude of “peaceful, hardworking and God-fearing” families engaged in desperate pursuits to enroll their wards and university hopefuls in “special coaching schools” while they purchase for them, seats at “special centres,” as they write the S.S.C.E and JAMB exams.

Such wards, dutifully trained to circumvent the straight, moral path to progress and self-actualization, eventually mature into foetal, perverse adults. All through their lives, they navigate the depths and shoals of challenging realities with the courage of a weevil and the wit of a hyena, if I may insult the poor animals by comparing such with them.

Eventually, the seeds of indolence and monstrosity sown in them grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by society and custom; at the end, we have brutes and savages running our lives and determining our future. At this juncture, I guess, many would dispute, claiming such shameful lot constitute just a minor fraction of the country’s 170 million-strong families or thereabouts.

I whole-heartedly disagree but if they insist, I hereby reiterate that, such wonderful families we have now that blesses us with the current ruling class. Such wonderful families we have now that blesses us with thieving bank chiefs and corrupt law enforcers.

Such wonderful families we have that blesses us with slothful civil servants, light-fingered bank clerks, desperate, treacherous journalists and lawyers. Such wonderful families we have that blesses us with prostitutes, armed robbers, Yahoo boys, and currency-activated clerics to mention a few.

One degeneracy gravitates into the other and we have for ourselves, a nation of finely bred brutes, idiots and foetal adults, pitifully programmed to self-destruct. I do not apologize for my abrasive choice of words. Were it acceptable, I would depict the average Nigerian with more colourful choice of words. We are very, very bad people.

Driven by greed, selfishness, indolence and appalling inclinations to play “God,” we embark on a never-ending quest to ruin Nigeria… righteously. The argument that it’s the lack of good leadership that forces us to be corrupt does not hold much substance anymore; let each one of us be accountable for his actions.

How many leaders do we have? If we count the number of politicians and every hoodlum plaguing our industries, politics and occupying our seats of power, will they add up to a million? Let’s assume that they add up to a million; there are 170 million Nigerians or thereabouts, of this lot, should a paltry million lead about 169 million astray? Is the fault not with the 169 million?

Our nation perishes by our gluttony and lust for fleeting and perishable vanities. It was greed and a disgraceful strain of cowardliness that drove our touted “men of god” to endorse former President Goodluck Jonathan’s candidacy, claiming his emergence was sanctified by their “god.” It was gluttony, cowardice and an unconquerable strain of prejudice that drove millions of Nigerians to troop to the polls to endorse the worst form of the ruling class.

Bestiality, like blood, seems to run perpetually in the veins of the Nigerian ruling class. It is not that the working class is any wiser. Age is of no value within our clans, likewise experience. Our old have no important advice to give to our young. Their experiences have been so partial and fraught with fraudulence that at the end, they pass off as miserable failures.

Indeed, it is good to be bad and bad to be good in contemporary Nigeria. Let us consider for a moment the caliber of leadership we have; the Nigerian ruling class tirelessly appropriates for itself what is meant for the benefit of all. Likewise, the poorest constituent of the breadlines is capable of meaner grotesqueness were he opportune to play with money and power. As it is with the rich, so it is with the poor. Poverty and affluence brings out the worst in us.

Every Nigerian considers himself the quintessential patriot capable of the fairest truth and reason. And from this perception emerges the contemporary Nigerian with the perfect politics, perfect economics, perfect religion and the most exact and accomplished approaches to all things.

Thus our nation abounds with perfect tyrants and looters, our homes with perfect batterers and paedophiles; our industries pulsate with perfect quacks and the slovenly, our schools with perfect dullards and numbnuts. Lest we forget the perfect rapists, kidnappers, hooligans and assassins prowling our streets, baiting the unforgiving second, when ruthless neurosis pulsates with will, for a price.

Every Nigerian is a law breaker. The rich believe they are above the law and the poor believe they could sneak under it, through it and away from its grasp. I would like to believe that the worst of our kind constitutes just a minor fraction of 170 million of us but as you read, our ruling class is busy pilfering our coffers even as it plays Russian roulette with our lives. The rich still connives with the ruling class to impoverish us further. The poor still curses the ruling class and curse the times even as they die daily to serve the whims of the ruling class.

As you read, parents are purchasing seats and liberties to cheat for their wards at JAMB and SSCE “special centres.” Our bankers are pilfering our accounts 50 kobo, N1 to N1000 by the second. Motorists are hastening off their normal lanes to face oncoming vehicles on the wrong lanes. Public administrators are stealing pension funds meant for elderly retirees. Journalists are receiving money to doctor and tilt stories according to the whims of shady politicians, business class and criminal masterminds. Doctors are forgetting surgical knives in helpless patients; lawyers are twisting the law to serve the whims of the worst creatures ever and you are reading this thinking I am just another ‘grifter’ calling the con-artist, ‘fraud.’

August 5, 2016
Parable of a truck load of terrible diseases

This week, Mr Hycinth Uzor is likely to be in mourning mood again. He does for long whenever one of his friends or class-mates at Fatimah College, Ilesa passes away. Fatimah College, in Osun State, Nigeria, was one of the best schools in the Western Region of Nigeria during the country’s First Republic. It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that Mr Uzor, became national sales Manager at the Nigerian Breveries Ltd, (NBL) after studying for his first degree at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, a feat in those days.

I have the privilege of offering Mr Uzor information about whatever any of his friends or classmates died of. They are all now in their seventies, a period in one’s life when, I guess, one cannot escape thinking about existence in the world beyond the comprehension of physical earthly senses. I remember him worrying for weeks about one of his class-mates who faced the challenge of shingles, an inflammatory nerve ending disorder. So bad was it that the gentleman travelled to India, only to return home and pass away soon after.

Uzor would also speak about Dr. Awomolo, one of his juniors at school, who treated many cases of prostate cancer, of which he, too, was later to die in his prime. The latest concern of Mr Uzor is a classmate he lost contact with for about 20 years. Then, about six months ago, someone gave him a description to the gentleman’s village somewhere in the east. And off to that village Mr Uzor went. What he discovered was heart-shattering. One of the feet of this gentleman was amputated. But that was the least of the problems Mr Uzor was to discover had befallen him over the years. First, this man suffered from prostate cancer for which he had a successful surgery. Later, he had such problems with his intestines which warranted that some parts that were diseased be surgically removed and the loose ends sutured together. Later, still, this man developed diabetes and a diabetic sore in the foot. The sore would not heal, became infected and gangrenous… and had to be surgically removed. As he was learning to cope with this new experience, the prostate gland struck again. He could not pass water, and he died. It is possible a remnant cancer cell or a group of them resurged, and wreaked the havoc. It is possible the root cause (s) of this condition were not addressed.

It reminds me of the saying of a Wise One that “neither drugs nor injections, but the right kinds of foods and drinks bring lasting health”. How I wish this gentleman was alive today to read in this column last Thursday of how, with Vegetable and Fruit Juices, Dr. Bernard Jenson healed the thirteen leg sores of a young woman that had been irresponsive to treatment by doctors at two leading hospitals in the United States. I wish, also, that he knew of one of the friends of Sunday Danson who had a diabetic sore which would not heal for years but, to his shock gave way to some herbs and topical application of a Nigerian bitters formula. While these events are regrettable and are sources of pain to survivors of people who yield to them, they help to warn the rest of us to take health matters seriously and to watch what goes into the mouths and stomachs, as ultimately, “we are what we eat and drink”.

Congratulations, Mr Uzor these events have encouraged him to slow down on lager. And he has become a constant repriminder of his bossom friend, Mr Schraps who, given his latest experiences, is learning to curb his appetite for his own pass time. These matters will be visited in more detail in due course. Suffice it to say today that many cases of benign prostate enlargement respond favourably to Small-flowered Willow herb, antiviral, anti-candida and anti-bacteria herbs in addition to anti-inflammatories the latest of which is Orange Peel. Diabetes should not be a scourge any more. Sugar burns well and doesn’t accumulate in the blood to cause havoc when certain food factors, including Chromium Picolinate, Vitamins and Minerals are present in the diet. Diabetics are nutrient-deficient for years, they probably subsisted in white flour bread, cow’s milk, sugar, margarine and fried egg for breakfast, simple carbohydrates for launch and trash meals for dinner.

Yinka Peter the young woman who checks my blood sugar at Keysley Pharmacy in Lagos has just learned her lesson when I hit 144 in a random check one day and crashed the following day to 80, she was prepare to agree that herbs work. The first day, I had indulged in about six bananas and sweetened yoghurt for breakfast. The following day, I challenged the sugar-balancing mechanism with the same diet with a copious serving of DIATOM. Besides Diatom, there are many sugar-burning herbs in the plant kingdom. Among them are Fenugreek, bitter melon, turmeric, Chanka Piedra (Ehibisowo or Ehin Olube: Yoruba), Orange peel, Cinamon e.t.c. intestinal problems are caused by many factors. But the one which appeals to me more are micro-organisms. It is said that, in a measure of stool, there are between 10 to 100 times more micro-organisms in the intestine than there are cells in our bodies. In the average adult human body, there are about 100 trillion cells! The micro-organism wish to make a home of our bodies, especially the intestines. Some of them are friendly bacteria, no doubt, working to inhibit the growth of the dangerous ones. But the dietary life styles of many people support the over population of the dangerous microbial flora. It isn’t, surprising, therefore, that many Nigerian men are “pregnant” walking the streets with protruding abdomen. There are, also, many women who are not bearing babies in their wombs but are merely parading bloated intestines filled with germs, gas and food sludges that would not easily digest or lend themselves to excretion due to constipation. Today, this column wishes again to invite attention to the health of the intestines through the photograph published elsewhere on this page. Note the robust colon and the varieties of the sickly colon. Many people whose footstool are the lead pencil-type and not the robust banana type probably have inflamed, narrowed or blocked intestinal passage which, as in the case of Uzor’s friends, may warrant surgical removal of the diseased portions. Surgery doesn’t restore the good life, it must be stated. For every portion of the intestines performs a specialised function. This then means that, after surgery, the specialised functions of those parts removed are lost for ever. If it is a simple case of the absorbtion of vitamins B12, for example such a person may become deficient in this Vitamin for life or resort to Vitamin B12 injections or the sublingual form of this vitamin. Such a person may be prone to anaemia. It is, therefore, better always to prevent health mishaps. Cheer up, Mr Uzor. As the Yoruba would say, iku ti o n pa ojugbaeni, owel’o n pa fun wani. This means death speaks in a parable through the dead of our contemporary. That parable means it may soon be our turn. That suggests we study his foot marks, gird our loins and strive to live a better life, health-wise.

April 14, 2016
The parable of death

Preamble

The corpse of another prominent Nigerian has just been brought back to country for burial today after weeks of self-deception in the name of culture. Such is the common experience especially in the southern part of the county where to be born or to die abroad is ignorantly considered a prestige.

Historians never agreed on when and where the first human couple, Adam and Hawau (Eve), died. Some claimed that they died and were buried in India. Others believed they lived and died in the Gulf area of the Middle East. According to the latter’s account, which Muslims tend to believe, Adam and Hawau met at a place near Makkah called Arafah which later became the general assembly centre of Muslim Pilgrims. The account suggested that after their expulsion from Paradise, they lived partly in the valley of Makkah and partly in Jeddah (75 kilometres away by the Red Sea).

The duo, Adam and Hawau, were said to have left Paradise separately following their expulsion only to meet later at ‘Arafah (which means recognition) after a long period of wondering. Their sojourn in that region of the world shows that the Middle East was the first place of human settlement. The existence of an ancient rectangular house called Ka‘bah is a testimony to this assertion. Hawau was believed to have died and interned in Jeddah, which is why the place was named Jeddah an Arabic word meaning Grandmother.

The first human death

Neither Adam nor his wife Hawau knew anything called death until one of their first two sons killed the other. The two sons – Habil and Qabil (Abel and Cain) had clashed over the choice of a wife. The tussle led to the killing of Habil by Qabil. But the focus here is neither on the cause of their clash nor the killing of one by the other. Rather, it is on the lesson which Allah wanted to teach humanity through that episode.

The lesson

Shortly after killing his brother, Qabil fell into a dilemma over what to do with the corpse. He was not worried as much by his conscience over his crime as to what would become of the corpse. But while thinking on what to do, two birds of the Roller family appeared before him and started fighting each other. In no time, one killed the other. The strange scene attracted the attention of Qabil like a tragic drama. He watched the incident with full attention as the killer bird used its legs to dig a grave-like hole, pushed the corpse of its vanquished brother into it and covered it up. From that wonderful scene, Qabil got the idea of what to do with the corpse of his brother. And he buried him. Thus, the lesson was learnt that this human being created from the earth would eventually return to the earth.

What Qabil did not know at that time, however, was that the two birds, which became his teachers, were Angels. And the lesson learnt from their experience was not just about death and burial but also about when and where to bury a human corpse. If Allah had wanted ceremony and ostentation to be lavished on burial, the killer bird would have demonstrated same in the drama. Qabil did not move the corpse of Habil to any other place for burial because his bird teacher did not do that. Like the killer bird, he also buried his brother at the very spot where the latter breathed his last.

When death strikes

In Islam, death is supposed to be the determinant of where the demised should be buried. Death takes life at a particular time and place according to its own natural schedule of duty. It gives no hint of the exact time and place to strike. And, after striking, it does not anticipate the transfer of a corpse across any major distance. That is why the body of any demised person starts to decompose just hours after it becomes lifeless. To confirm this, the Quran chapter 31: 24 says: “No soul knows what it will do tomorrow. No soul knows where it will die and be buried”.

The first Muslim group

The first group of the Makkans who embraced Islam at its inception suffered so much severe persecution in the hands of pagans that they had to migrate to Abyssinia (Now Ethiopia) for safety. While there, a number of them died and their wives and children became widows and orphans respectively. All those who died in Abyssinia were buried in that country. Another group of the earliest Muslims migrated to Taif. A number of them also died there leaving widows, widowers and orphans behind. Their bodies were not transferred back to Makkah for burial

Over this, some unbelievers may argue that those emigrants were fugitives who had no courage to bring back the corpses of their relatives for burial. But what of those who died in the battle of Badr in which Makkah pagans came all the way from Makkah, a distance of about 650 kilometers away, to engage the Muslims in a war in Madinah? The corpses of the Muslims who died in that imposed war were buried right there at the battle ground despite the nearness of Badr to Madinah and the Muslims’ victory in that battle?

The Prophet’s example

It should be remembered that one of the most painful deaths to Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was that of his uncle, Hamzah, the great warrior who fell to the spear of a Makkan pagan in the battle of Uhd and was buried right there at the foot of mountain Uhd in Madinah where the battle took place. In fact, no one who died in another town or country among the Muslims was ever brought back to his original home for burial. Not even the corpse of the Prophet or that of any of his disciples who died in Madinah was returned to Makkah for burial. The reason for this is to avoid the transfer of bitterness and mental agony arising from the death of a person from one place to another.

Implication

Not only that, it is also to avoid the unnecessary strain and expenses which such transfer can unleash on some people. That was why great disciples like Abubakr, Umar Bn Khattab, Uthman Bn Affan had to be buried in Madinah where they died rather than Makkah where they were born. Also, Ali bn Abi Talib and Mu’awiyah bn Abi Sufyan were buried in Iraq and Syria respectively where they served as caliphs and died. Even Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet and 72 others who were massacred by the forces of Yazid bn Mu’awiyah at Karbalau in Iraq had to be buried where they were massacred despite the nobility of their pedigree.

In Islam, death, like birth has no propensity for any display of aristocracy. And, ascribing one to it is a sign of ignorance and primitivism. Islam abhors extravagance in whatever form and it admonishes against it. That is why the great religion does not take kindly to commercial exhibition of coffins and ostentatious funerals. These are actually prohibited in Islam. Coffins can be used to convey corpses from the place of death or mortuary to the cemetery but such coffins must not be ornamentally decorated. Neither must the Muslim corpses be extravagantly shrouded for burial.

The idea of keeping the corpse in a morgue for a long time after death, to allow for ostentatious funeral and extravagant spending in a society where poverty is manifest, is an act of callousness based on ignorance. Neither the expensive shroud nor the ornamented coffin with which the corpse is buried has any benefit to the soul of the deceased. It is sheer wastage, which has no use even for the relatives of the deceased. That idea, which is rampant, especially in some parts of Nigeria today, is hardly different from cremation done by the Buddhists, the Hindus and others with fanfare in the Far East. Both are a product of ignorance and vain-glory.

Blind imitation

As usual, Nigerians do not copy anything negative without surpassing the original. Fraud and narcotics as well as terrorism are some examples. The fashion now in vogue in Nigeria is for any public official or private moneybag to travel abroad for medical treatment at the slightest feeling of an ailment. It is as if Nigerian money is outlawed from providing the best hospital here in Nigeria. The concept is to separate the rich from the poor since an exclusive hospital for the rich will sound illogical in a country peopled overwhelmingly by with paupers. Even when some of those sick travellers will be treated abroad by their fellow Nigerians, they do not see anything wrong in spending their ill-gotten money abroad to the detriment of their home country. They seem to enjoy being flown back home lifeless if only to display aristocracy in death. Thus, your death is not considered newsworthy unless your corpse is flown into the country via Muritala Muhammad International Airport (MMIA), Lagos or Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja for public display. Yet no lesson is learnt that even Muritala Muhammad and Nnamdi Azikiwe died and were buried here in Nigeria. Can anybody cite a clear difference between death in Europe or America and the one in Nigeria? Why must our money be audaciously stolen alive in Nigeria and brazenly spent in death abroad?

Extravagance

With the huge amount of money spent by Nigerian sick travellers on treatments abroad and on flying their corpses back home, one can understand why Nigerians are so wretched that their lives are not worth more than a dollar per head per day despite the billions of dollars accruing to the country from our oil wells. It is necessary to thank God however, that though ‘Tokunbo’ products dumped in Nigeria daily are uncountable, the human corpses amongst them are those of the aristocrats and not of the innocent indigent class.

Leveller of mankind

Death is a leveller of mankind. It does not distinguish between the rich and the poor.

We shall all die willy-nilly and we shall all be buried in the belly of the same mother earth where the bones of masters and servants or those of sworn enemies may struggle together for space. Mother earth can be described as man’s inseparable companion. She accompanies man day and night, in life and in death. She surpasses biological mothers in playing her role in the life of man. From a chip of her natural being, man is said to have been created. Allah tells us in Qur’an that “From her (the earth) ‘We’ created you and into her belly ‘We’ shall return you”.

In playing the role of a mother, the earth carries man on her back while the latter remains alive. And in death, she incubates him in her belly in readiness for the resurrection that will see him through the inevitable Day of Judgment. In that process, there is a similarity between the duties of a primary mother (the earth) and that of a secondary mother otherwise known as biological mother especially in respect of conception and delivery.

While the biological mother cares for man only when she and man are alive, the mother earth cares for him both in life and in death. Unlike that of the biological mother, the life span of the mother earth is indefinite.

Age of the Earth

Some scientists have given us different ages of the earth using all sorts of technological instruments. But the only authentic statement on that can come from the Almighty Allah Who created the earth. If scientists have the means of telling us the age of the earth, do they also have the means of determining her life span? The earth is not just a carrier of unlimited weight; she is also a scale of unlimited measure. She weighs the load on her head as well as the one in her belly and balances them up for natural equanimity.

Without the earth, mountains and oceans would have no habitat to call their own and the long term fossils which turn into what we call minerals would have had nowhere to hibernate. Before all these and millions of other unidentified matters came into existence, the earth had been. And when all of them might have vanished into permanent oblivion, according to their scheduled time, the earth will continue to be until natural termination time comes.

We know that man was created from the earth. We know that the earth accommodates all living and non-living things on and in her. What we do not know is the source of the earth in creation. From what was the earth created? In luring us to reasoning, Allah has severally called the attention of man to the nature of certain creatures like the mountains, the valleys, the oceans and the seas, the minerals and the human and animal fossils buried in the earth as well as the varieties of plants and insects which dot the earth like a galaxy of stars on the Milky Way. He has also challenged man to observe the very nature of the wonderful carpet called the earth.

No difference

The earth in America or China or Australia is not different from that of Nigeria or Saudi Arabia or Italy. And no earth is superior to another except with Allah’s conferment of sacredness.

Were the aristocrats privileged to calve out a separate portion of the earth for themselves, they would have restricted the masses to a disadvantaged area of the earth. But the thinking of man is different from the planning of Allah. Celebration of funerals so flamboyantly as often exhibited in Nigeria is nothing more than celebration of vanity which fetches the celebrator no profit. In Islam, it is ordained to care for the dead in spirit and in action. But such should not at the expense of the living. Doing so is a glaring evidence of ignorance which no civilised people would ever want to pursue.

August 14, 2015
Tinubu and parable of the ‘first supper’

When I wrote the piece: ‘Tinubu: A Parody of Shakespeare’ a few friends and colleagues said I was un-characteristically ‘patronizing’. Some wondered if I too had not fallen for the Tinubu ‘cult of personality’; or as one of them put it ‘cult of the insatiable power-seeker’. And to quite a few of those friends and colleagues whose opinion about my professional integrity I do give a damn about, I did vouchsafe some cogent explanation: first I said that even as I was sure they knew me not to ‘advocate for the devil’, yet they should not forget that I was not one either not to ‘give the devil his due’.

I should say, for the records, that I believed –and I still do- that Tinubu deserved that tribute which I paid to him; that I still think him worthy of all the sentiments contained therein and that I still feel proud that I wrote that piece. Tinubu has fathered a peaceful political revolution in Nigeria which has not only moved our democracy beyond a notch by its shattering of the myth of the invincibility of incumbency, but it has saved the nation from the malignance of a ruinous era of political impunity which was bent on balkanizing our country.

And let me say that if Tinubu, afterwards should, for any reason lend the instrumentation of his time, his prowess and his resources in the promotion of any contrary ideal odious or antithetical to the noble one of growing our democracy and developing our nation-, I should also, with a measure of antipathy equal to the enthusiasm with which I had praised him, deploy the venom of my pen to harangue and to disapprobate him.

But come to think of it, if you ask me whether I think Tinubu is ‘evil’ –politically, I should answer as much with the affirmative ‘Yes’ as with the negative ‘no’. For as ‘beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’, logically-speaking I think, so should ‘ugliness’ be also ‘in the eyes of the beholder’. And so to a bitter PDP whose defeat the Asiwaju’s deft, adept and adroit politics had caused, Tinubu is most definitely ‘evil’; and thus in the subjective eyes of members of PDP, Tinubu is uglier than the mythical Gorgon. But to the APC whose political fortunes Tinubu’s (even if) neo-Machiavellic master-tactic has now raised from ‘nothing’ to ‘everything’, the Jagaban is most definitely no ‘evil’ but ‘good’ and thus in the objective eyes of sincere members of APC, Tinubu should be the personification of beauty itself –politically that is.

Alas, as we see presently in the treacherous hustle and jostle for political positions, this is not so with the hawks and vultures in the APC who now masquerade as altruistic progressive change-agents of the Buhari government. To these neo-conservative opportunists, all of a sudden ‘Asiwaju’ ‘The Leader’ is now simply Tinubu ‘The meddlesome interloper’! He is as they now claim ‘unnecessarily interfering with our democratic processes’ and must thus be cut to size. And on this you cannot but have a sense of the poignantly disgusting and the de ja vu: especially if you recall what the then Rhodesia’s oppressive head Colonialist Ian Smith said to the anti-colonial world of the 70s about Zimbabweans: “These blacks are spoiling my democracy!” ‘My democracy indeed!’

They said that the Asiwaju wants to install surrogate leaders for the legislature so he can remote-control them. And I say: ‘assuming, without conceding, that this is true, to what end, if we may ask, would Tinubu want to remote-control the NASS?’ Is it to prevent it from passing good progressive bills that will give effect to the promise of ‘change’ by Buhari? Or is it to egg the NASS on to anti-Buhari tantrums so that the General’s government cannot effectively function? I really don’t get it!

And I even wonder more: did they not invest Tinubu with all the sobriquets and appellations of a ‘Leader’? Did they not say that he was the courageous ‘Jagaban’; the one who led from the front? And did Tinubu not lead them from the front? Selflessly giving his time, his energy and his resources? Did he not put his life on the line of a hysterically dangerous incumbency desperately angling to keep power by hook or crook? Did they not say that Tinubu’s was a goal-oriented and decisively go-getting ‘Leadership’?

And need one also ask: did we not, to the occasional rousing applause of Nigerians, see them severally winning one political battle after another under the leadership of the Jagaban? From when Tinubu fought to win series of judicial victories to restore the political control of the South-west into the hands of the progressives; a feat which gave the earliest fillip to the initiative for the formation of a formidable coalition of opposition political parties?

Did we not see the series of political mutations afterwards initiated and set in motion from the pre-natal stages, the singular efforts of one man to corral several ideological eggs into one political embryo, so as to give life to a new all-embracing political party around which both progressives and even repentant fascists could congregate to make practicable what was thought well-nigh impossible, namely enacting the parting of the political Red Sea to say to the behemoth PDP ‘let my people go!’

But maybe what we were seeing from aloof was different from what exactly was happening within! But I thought that we all saw Tinubu burning the political candle through nights and nights of vigils to disprove all the known theories of war which posit that more than one battle cannot be fought at a time; I thought we saw the Asiwaju take on both INEC and government in a proxy war with surrogate usurpers of the baptismal of the new political ideology, the A-P-C! -and which he won!

We thought that we saw Tinubu walk the miles from the North-west to the North-east; from North-central to the South-east and from the South-west to the South-south to build strong bridges of geo-ethnic and geo-political consensus; planning and strategizing to form alliances, to create leagues of political amity and to search out for men and women of weight and of mettle; political and non-political actors with diverse gifts and varying competences, to man the many points of the opposition’s political rudder.

These efforts were rewarded with successes in the creation of the first ever successful merger, the formation of the first ever peoples party, the conduct of one of the most transparent party primaries, the emergence of the most popular presidential candidate, the running of the most competitive presidential electioneering campaigns, and the first ever defeat of incumbency by an opposition party in one of the most transparent presidential elections.

But now that the political dinner table is set, surrounded, unfortunately, by opportunistic political vultures and hyenas, they are telling us that although Tinubu is an excellent political cook, he is not as good in the culinary art of dishing. That the Party Leader must stay away from the party’s first political supper! In fact like Caesar they accused the Asiwaju of ambition. The same Tinubu who had publicly announced that Buhari had offered him a chance to be on the Presidential ticket –an offer which he said he politely declined.

Tinubu does not deserve this kind of treatment. Asiwaju as the Party Leader and the party are the veritable taproots of the President. If they who care about the President’s success are left at the mercy of the party’s vultures and hyenas who only care about the spoils of politics, sooner or later the shrub of the presidency and its blooming foliage will feel the wilt. It is both morally and politically expedient that Buhari steps in to restore rank discipline and to assure the Asiwaju and the party hierarchy that he has ‘got their back’; just like they, through thick and thin, had always had the President’s back.

June 15, 2015